Bette Midler

Bette Midler didn't start on the red carpet. Her training ground was the saunas of the Continental Baths in New York in the early 1970s. There she sang for men in towels while a young Barry Manilow accompanied her on the piano.

That environment shaped the woman audiences would come to know as the Divine Miss M. She was a loud, foul-mouthed celebrity who mixed vaudeville with rock without asking anyone's permission. Midler quickly realized that to survive in show business she needed to be bigger than life itself.

The industry didn't know what to do with her.

In 1979, she landed her first major film role in The Rose. She played a self-destructive rock star loosely based on Janis Joplin. The role earned her an Oscar nomination and proved that her dramatic power was as real as her raunchy jokes.

Her relationship with the major Hollywood studios was never simple, though. After the commercial failure of Jinxed! in 1982, the actress spent several years in a professional exile that seemed permanent.

A Haven for Commercial Comedy

Everything changed when she signed a contract with Disney through its subsidiary Touchstone Pictures. In 1986, she starred in Down and Out in Beverly Hills, and box office audiences responded with an enthusiasm no one in the industry had expected.

During that decade she followed up with projects such as Ruthless People and Outrageous Fortune. Midler found a comfortable niche in comedy of errors (a genre she mastered by instinct), where her comic timing worked like a precision mechanism.

In 1988, she produced Beaches under her own company, All Girl Productions. The film grossed more than $57 million in the United States alone, and its theme song won the Grammy for Record of the Year.

And the gamble paid off.

In 1991, she returned to war drama with For the Boys. Although the film was not the blockbuster hit she had hoped for, it earned her a second Academy Award nomination and solidified her reputation as a producer with a sharp eye.

Constant Reinvention

The nineties brought one of her most remembered characters for new generations. In 1993 she stepped into the role of Winifred Sanderson in Hocus Pocus. Although it wasn't a mass phenomenon at its release, the film became a cult title thanks to constant television airings.

In 1996, she topped the box office again with The First Wives Club. She shared the bill with Diane Keaton and Goldie Hawn in a story about three middle-aged women seeking revenge on their ex-husbands, which connected with an audience overlooked by blockbusters.

But the theater was always her safety net.

After years away from the big stages, she returned to Broadway in 2017 to star in a new version of Hello, Dolly!. Advance ticket sales broke records at the Shubert Theatre, and she took home the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical.

In 2022, she reprised her role as a witch in the sequel Hocus Pocus 2 for Disney+. Filming took place in Rhode Island, and the production had an estimated budget of $40 million.

In 2024 she starred in the comedy The Fabulous Four under the direction of Jocelyn Moorhouse. The film was shot entirely on location in Australia and the state of Georgia.